


Who Cover Faults

by raja815



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, Childhood, Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Illness, Pre-Series, School, Shame, Vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 23:11:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1204030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raja815/pseuds/raja815
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten-year-old Spock experiences discomfort while at school, and is determined to control it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Cover Faults

**Author's Note:**

> For a challenge with [colonel_bastard](http://archiveofourown.org/users/colonel_bastard), "headache," on a 1000 word limit. This week I wrote the horrible breakdown and she wrote the lovely adorable fic. Link soon to follow.
> 
> I wrote this with a ten-year-old TOS!Spock in mind, but I was inspired by the [Vulcan school](http://raja815.tumblr.com/post/77060386820/acting-captains-log-it-is-morally-praiseworthy) scene in the reboot film, which was easily my favorite part about the movie. Technically I suppose it could work for either version of Spock, so please feel free to pick your favorite. 
> 
> Warnings for body fluids, depicted in some detail.
> 
> Title from King Lear:  
>  _Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides:_  
>  _Who cover faults, at last shame them derides._  
> 

Four hours into the school day, Spock begins to experience discomfort.

He is in his computer cistern, attempting to formulate a sequent calculus proof, when he notices a tightness in his neck and shoulders. He attempts to ignore it, increasing his focus on the series of equations before him. Calculus is his preferred mathematic study, and the work is very satisfying.

Or at least it normally is. 

Today he cannot seem to find his center, to lose himself in the flowing logic of the numbers. The more he tries to focus, the more the tightness in his neck progresses, until he has closed out all but one of the four equation sets he had been simultaneously exploring when the lesson began.

He does not know what is causing his trouble. Perhaps it is merely exhaustion. He has not slept well in the past month, not since progressesing to the fourth level of _wh'ltri_ , the lower stage Vulcan meditation discipline, and though he has endeavored to conceal his difficulties, he has also failed to correct them. His daily meditation has been irregular, his sleep broken and fitful. Muscular tension and lack of focus could, he reasons, result from these inadequacies.

With a sharp spasm along trapezius muscle, the discomfort escalates. Spock rolls his shoulders in an effort to relieve the tension, but it does not dissipate. In fact, it is aggravated, no longer discomfort but acute pain, spreading upward from his neck and into the right side of his head.

He tries to dismiss it. He looks to the computer, reads through another equation, but increasingly he cannot concentrate. The screen appears out of focus. The numbers glitter against the background as if seen through heat mirage, and all the time the pain is increasing, pounding within his head.

I am ill, he realizes, with a panicked jolt that has nothing to do with his condition. The correct thing to do, he knows, is summon one of the masters. If he is ill, he must seek treatment… but if he does so, the rest of the class will hear. They will know. They will watch as Spock walks out of the computer chamber, lead out by a master like some unworthy animal, and during midday break they will speak of nothing else, reveling in Spock’s latest failure. A true Vulcan, they will say, would not have lost control.

At that thought, a burn of shame joins the escalating pain. Spock bites back a grimace. 

No, he decides, he will not alert the masters.

 _Control._ Pain is experienced in the body, but perceived through the mind. There is no reason he cannot control this pain until the lesson is over. Perhaps he can even control it until school ends and he returns home. Perhaps by then it will have dissipated all together, as bodily complaints sometimes do. 

_Control,_ he begs himself, trying to focus on the numbers, to lose himself in the proof, but he cannot. He has never experienced pain of this magnitude, of this ever-increasing intensity, and as his pain escalates, so do his panic and his shame. They merge into a glassy-bright _throb_ , burrowing behind his right eye, pulsing along with his heartbeat, stronger and sharper with every beat.

"A to the power of B, root seven," he reads from the screen, desperately holding onto his composure. It is difficult to speak; his mouth seems disconnected, as though the throb of his head has loosened its connection to his body. The screen before him shimmers and the dim light of the classroom is suddenly far too bright, as bright as the desert outside.

Control, he thinks again, trying to block the pain, but he cannot. It is senseless, illogical, with no definable source, and yet it has defeated him, completely overtaken the right side of his head. Strangely the left side seems unaffected, and in a desperate attempt to regain focus he fixes his concentration there. The result is a spinning disorientation that threatens to send him reeling to the floor.

"If A to… the power of B root… seven, then C is XY… root... C is XY root—" he gasps through the vertigo. His body flushes hot. A sour wetness floods the back of his throat, and he realizes with a flash of horror what is about to happen too late to prevent it.

He vomits.

It gushes out of his still-open mouth, sprays the hand he forces up to try to hold it back. His head throbs so violently for a moment he sees only blackness, but still hears the awful splash of liquid against glass. When he opens his eyes rivulets of yellow bile are running down the curved screen, obscuring the numbers, pooling at his feet. It covers the front of his school tunic, drips from his hand, slides inside his collar onto his chest. The smell is everywhere, pungent and acid, so strong that when he breathes the pain spikes. He moans and retches again, pitching forward, smearing his hands against the soiled glass.

A ringing echo crashes above him, huge in his aching head, coming closer and closer. One of the masters is hurrying toward him, summoned either by the sound of Spock’s illness or the sheer force of his mental distress. He can hear the master’s footsteps so clearly, he realizes, because the mixed chatter of his classmates as they work through their own proofs has died away entirely.

He is lying down in a darkened office when his mother arrives, bringing him clean clothes for the ride home and a word for what has happened to him.

“Your grandfather used to get awful migraines too,” she says. “Lots of humans get them. Oh, Spock, it’s nothing you could’ve helped.”

She reaches for him, to smooth his hair, or stroke his back, and he jerks away from her touch before it can connect. He knows she intends the words to be comforting, but he cannot understand why she thinks they would be.


End file.
